


Halloween

by daredeer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Halloween, Otherwise: Halloween shenanigans!, Sherlock/John (b)romance, There's some one-sided longing if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daredeer/pseuds/daredeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Pumpkins, John? Really?'<br/>John allowed himself a little smirk behind his teacup.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halloween

'Pumpkins, John? Really?'

John allowed himself a little smirk behind his teacup.

Sherlock was examining one of the rotund vegetables with the same precision and severity he usually gave to a dead body at a crime scene, though with a good deal less of the manic grinning. He sniffed it. He scratched the thick skin with his nail. He tossed it from hand to hand. John was half expecting him to start spinning it on the end of one finger.

'Why have you bought pumpkins?'

'Because it's Halloween tomorrow.'

'Which is a holiday aimed almost entirely towards children. We are grown men.'

John scoffed and muttered something about 'not acting like one'.

Sherlock ignored him, setting the pumpkin back down onto the kitchen table and staring at it with disdain. 'Why are you trying to involve me in this pathetic appeal to tradition? You haven't in previous years.'

'Because in previous years, Sherlock, you've been dragging me all over London chasing murderers and psychopaths!' said John, getting to his feet and entering the kitchen. He started to open drawers and rattle around in them.

'You didn't complain.'

'Sherlock,' said John levelly, turning to face him. 'It's not like I'm asking you to go trick-or-treating with me. I've bought two pumpkins, and as much as it terrifies me to willingly hand you a knife, you're going to sit down and carve one.'

  
  


Roughly an hour later, two carved pumpkins sat like gargoyles on either side of the kitchen table. One was carved in a traditional manner: slanting, triangular eyes, a jagged mouth, and two slits for nostrils. When John had proudly held his pumpkin up for all to see, it had taken some effort for Sherlock to comment that it was 'appropriately spooky'. Instead, he rather felt that John's face whilst he'd been concentrating (furrowed brow, wrinkled nose, tip of his tongue sticking out from between his lips) would have made a much more appealing design. To him, at least.

The other pumpkin held rather a stunning resemblance to the elder Holmes brother, complete with sharply arched eyebrows, tufting hairline and even the mole under the eye. When finished, Sherlock had turned it around and beamed at the peal of laughter John let out at the sight. 

'It's supposed to have a scary face!'

Sherlock had looked at him blankly. 'It does.'

John shook his head, grinning as he went to wash up the knives.

 

  
The following afternoon, John arrived home with a flush in his cheeks and a leaf the colour of sparking embers stuck in his hair. He dropped his briefcase by the door and shrugged off his coat. 'You haven't touched that leftover pumpkin in the fridge, have you?'

Sherlock's eyes remained on the book in his hand, the pages held open between thumb and little finger. 'No. Close the door. It's freezing.'

'Tell me about it,' replied John, closing the door and unwinding the scarf from about his neck. 'You didn't have to walk for fifteen minutes because of tube repairs.'

Sherlock's response was a hum and a rustle as he turned a page.

John walked to stand behind him, and leant over his shoulder with a curious expression, which smoothly turned into a disgruntled expression. 'Stop nicking my medical books,' he said, flicking the side of Sherlock's head with one hand and taking back his encyclopedia with the other and dropping it on his own chair. Sherlock shot him a wounded expression. John ignored it.

'Come on. We're making soup.'

' _We_ ?' asked the detective, incredulous. 

'Yes. It's your turn to sort dinner, anyway. And we can't keep on having takeaway every other night. I'm a doctor; I ought to be concerned about my blood pressure. C'mon.'

 

  
Whilst the soup cooked, the air of 221B Baker Street began to smell less like musty leather and chemicals, and became instead filled with a sweet, spicy warmth that Sherlock could almost taste if he breathed through his mouth. The leaf in John's hair almost ended up in the saucepan, but Sherlock whisked it away with pale fingers just as it started to make a descent. The recipe John had printed off became splattered with burnt-orange splodges, and as John switched off the stove and searched for a couple of bowls, he saw Sherlock whisk the now-tattered paper away and stow it in the cupboard with that cookery book Mrs Hudson had bought John for his previous birthday. Sherlock didn't keep things unless he determined them to have future use. 

Thick and smooth, and dotted with half-baked chunks of pumpkin, and swirled around with the last of the cream and a shaking of dried paprika, the soup looked almost like art in those chipped bowls, and John couldn't help smiling as Sherlock inhaled and ate greedily, curled in his chair like a feline. 

  
  


A couple of tea-lights and a dozen damp matches later, the two carved pumpkins sat on the windowsill, looking down onto Baker Street below and observing the few polyester-clad zombies, witches and devils who wandered past. Many were not children at all – they were indeed grown men (and women) – and when John pointed this out to Sherlock, his only reply was a quiet 'hmph'. 

  
  


'Harry used to drag me out with her every year, 'till she was about sixteen, I think. Then, she decided it was all just too young for her. But up to then, I'd have a different costume every year: Frankenstein, a skeleton, Dracula, an Egyptian mummy... one time, she actually cut eye-holes in a sheet and proclaimed me a ghost. God, I remember that. I kept tripping over it all night,' said John, rubbing a hand across his forehead. 

Sherlock paused with his glass to his lips. 'I remember Mummy forcing Mycroft to go trick-or-treating with me a few times when I was very young. He never enjoyed it.'

'Mycroft?' repeated John, smiling wickedly. 'Did he ever dress up?'

'Oh yes. Together, Mummy and I ensured it,' said Sherlock, his lip curling. 'You see, I always wanted to wear a pirate costume- and what good is a pirate captain without his first mate?'

A vision of a shorter, teenage Mycroft in a striped vest and cloth hat materialised in John's mind, and he chuckled. 'I can imagine.'

'Anyway,' continued Sherlock. 'I always got loads more sweets than he did. I was 'cute', apparently.'

John saw the dismissive flapping of Sherlock's hand, but he also saw the pleased gleam in his eye.

'And then you decided that solving crimes was much better than sailing the seven seas?'

'Well. Like I said, what good is a captain without his first mate?'

John raised his eyebrows. 'Well, a blogger's just as good as a first mate. Even better, in my opinion.'

Sherlock raised his glass in John's direction and bowed his head respectfully before taking another sip.

 

  
'They look ridiculous.'

John snarled at him, then stuck his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and removed the plastic fangs. 'That's the whole point.'

'The horns aren't much better.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said John with a chuckle. 'I used to be quite the devil when I was younger. 'Three Continents Watson', they used to call me.' 

Bright eyes flickered over John for a moment, taking in the gaudy scarlet horns pointing out from his temples, as well as the sly grin and raised eyebrow; a cheeky, 'come-hither' expression. Though of course, John was only winking coyly at him like that for comedic effect. 

'I would bet that they called you a lot of other things as well,' said Sherlock dryly, and promptly got hit on the side of his head by a pair of low-flying vampire fangs.

A moment passed in quiet, in which John watched the firelight flicker on the pale, sculpted marble of Sherlock's features.

'You know, I bet some people would say  _you're_ a vampire.'

Sherlock shot John his best 'are-you-tipsy-or-just-an-idiot' look. 

'Don't look at me like that; you're the one on your second glass. No, really- you've got dark hair and pale skin, and a lot of people think you're emotionless-' 

Sherlock tutted.

'-and you wear that big dark coat, flouncing around in it all the time-'

Sherlock frowned and mouthed ' _flouncing?_ ' at the wall.

'-and turning your collar up and being all mysterious with your... cheekbones.'

'Alright. Okay, John, you've got me.'

John looked up, eyes wide beneath brows furrowed in apprehension, and said flatly, 'What?'

'I'm secretly a vampire.'

Approximately three seconds passed of them both trying to keep a straight face, and then Sherlock bared his teeth dramatically and John had no choice but to laugh.

'I'd better be off to bed. Work again in the morning,' said John with a groan and a stretch. 'There'll be a load of kids complaining of stomach-aches because they ate too many sweets on Halloween, so that'll be a fun day for me.'

'Indeed. And I'll be having just as much fun stuck here bored all day, unless Lestrade texts me.'

'Oh, go and experiment on some corpses. I'm sure you'll be able to get Molly to let you in with your dashing good looks and winning personality,' said John, walking to the kitchen and leaving his glass by the sink.

'No fear. I'll use my vampire powers of seduction,' replied Sherlock in a rich baritone.

John laughed again. 'Night, Sherlock,' he called, pausing in the doorway. 'Try not to sneak in and suck my blood in the dead of night.'

'I'll do my best.' 

 


End file.
